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Bollywood is often incorrectly used to refer to
the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the Indian film
industry. Bollywood is one of the largest film producers in the
world, producing more than 1,000 films a year, with an audience of
3.6 billion people.
The name is a portmanteau of Bombay and Hollywood, the center of the
American film industry. Though some deplore the name, arguing that
it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood, it seems
likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English
Dictionary.
Bollywood is commonly referred to as Hindi cinema, even though
Hindustani, the substratum common to both Hindi and Urdu, might be
more accurate. Bollywood consists of the languages of Hindi, Urdu
and English. The use of poetic Urdu words is fairly common. The
connection between Hindi, Urdu, and Hindustani is an extremely
contentious matter.
There has been a growing presence of Indian English in dialogue and
songs as well. It is not uncommon to see films that feature dialogue
with English words and phrases, even whole sentences. There are a
growing number of English films. A few films are also made in two or
even three languages (either using subtitles, or several
soundtracks).
Bollywood film music is called filmi music (from Hindi, meaning "of
films").
Songs from Bollywood movies are generally pre-recorded by
professional playback singers, with the actors then lip synching the
words to the song on-screen, often while dancing. While most actors,
especially today, are excellent dancers, few are also singers. One
notable exception was Kishore Kumar, who starred in several major
films in the 1950s while also having a stellar career as a playback
singer. K. L. Saigal, Suraiyya, and Noor Jehan were also known as
both singers and actors. Some actors in the last thirty years have
sung one or more songs themselves; for a list, see Singing actors
and actresses in Indian cinema.
Playback singers are prominently featured in the opening credits and
have their own fans who will go to an otherwise lacklustre movie
just to hear their favourites. Going by the quality as well as the
quantity of the songs they rendered, most notable singers of
Bollywood are Suraiyya, Noor Jehan, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle,
Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum, Alka Yagnik, etc among female playback
singers and K. L. Saigal, Talat Mahmood, Mukesh, Mohammed Rafi,
Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan,
Sonu Nigam among male playback singers. Mohammed Rafi is often
considered the arguably finest of the singers that sung for
Bollywood, followed by Lata Mangeshkar, who, through the course of a
career spanning over six decades, has recorded thousands of songs
for Indian movies. The composers of film music, known as music
directors, are also well-known. Their songs can make or break a film
and usually do. Remixing of filmi songs with modern beats and
rhythms is a common occurrence today, and producers may even release
remixed versions of some of their films' songs along with the films'
regular soundtrack albums.
The dancing in Bollywood films, especially older ones, is primarily
modelled on Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic
northern Indian courtesans (tawaif), or folk dances. In modern
films, Indian dance elements often blend with Western dance styles
(as seen on MTV or in Broadway musicals), though it is not unusual
to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in
the same film. The hero or heroine will often perform with a troupe
of supporting dancers. Many song-and-dance routines in Indian films
feature unrealistically instantaneous shifts of location and/or
changes of costume between verses of a song. If the hero and heroine
dance and sing a pas-de-deux (a dance and ballet term, meaning
"dance of two"), it is often staged in beautiful natural
surroundings or architecturally grand settings. This staging is
referred to as a "picturisation".
Songs typically comment on the action taking place in the movie, in
several ways. Sometimes, a song is worked into the plot, so that a
character has a reason to sing; other times, a song is an
externalisation of a character's thoughts, or presages an event that
has not occurred yet in the plot of the movie. In this case, the
event is almost always two characters falling in love.
Bollywood films have always used what are now called "item numbers".
A physically attractive female character (the "item girl"), often
completely unrelated to the main cast and plot of the film, performs
a catchy song and dance number in the film. In older films, the
"item number" may be performed by a courtesan (tawaif) dancing for a
rich client or as part of a cabaret show. The dancer Helen was
famous for her cabaret numbers. In modern films, item numbers may be
inserted as discotheque sequences, dancing at celebrations, or as
stage shows.
For the last few decades Bollywood producers have been releasing the
film's soundtrack, as tapes or CDs, before the main movie release,
hoping that the music will pull audiences into the cinema later.
Often the soundtrack is more popular than the movie. In the last few
years some producers have also been releasing music videos, usually
featuring a song from the film. However, some promotional videos
feature a song which is not included in the movie.
The film script or lines of dialogue
(called "dialogues" in Indian English) and the song lyrics are often
written by different people.
Dialogues are usually written in an unadorned Hindi or Hindustani
that would be understood by the largest possible audience. Some
movies, however, have used regional dialects to evoke a village
setting, or old-fashioned courtly Urdu in Mughal-era historical
films. Contemporary mainstream movies also make great use of
English. In fact, many movie scripts are first written in English,
and then translated into Hindi.
Cinematic language, whether in dialogues or lyrics, is often
melodramatic and invokes God, family, mother, duty, and
self-sacrifice liberally.
Music directors often prefer working with certain lyricists, to the
point that the lyricist and composer are seen as a team. This
phenomenon is not unlike the pairings of American composers and
songwriters that created old-time Broadway musicals (e.g., Richard
Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, or Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick
Loewe). Song lyrics are usually about love. Bollywood song lyrics,
especially in the old movies, frequently use Arabo-Persic Urdu
vocabulary. Another source for love lyrics is the long Hindu
tradition of poetry about the mythological amours of Krishna, Radha,
and the gopis. Many lyrics compare the singer to a devotee and the
object of his or her passion to Krishna or Radha.
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